Athena Hardani’s mother was an opera singer: except in Iran, as a woman, she wasn’t allowed to sing. Eager for more freedom, the family – mother, father and two small daughters – made their way towards what promised to be better lands.

The 17-year-old sits on her hands as she talks, quietly, on the grounds of Brisbane’s Yeronga state high school. “I was very frightened,” she says. “In Iran, in year 7, they teach you how to swim. But my sister was one year younger than me. So she didn’t learn how.”

Hardini was rescued by a passing fishing boat; her father, having clung to wreckage for three days in the water, was also saved.

Steven George rehearses in Opera Queensland’s Songs of Belonging Photograph: Stephanie Do Rozario

Now safely in Australia, Hardini hopes to become an opera singer, like her mother. Next year, she wants to apply to study opera at Griffith’s Queensland Conservatorium. For her audition, she is planning to sing a song from sci-fi movie The Fifth Element, one that reminds her of her past. “My mum and my sister died in the ocean. It’s like she was in the music. [When I listen to it] I remember the ocean.”

It is her story – and perseverance, plus love of opera – that has helped inspire a new initiative in the school she goes to: Songs of Belonging.

Opera Queensland first worked with Hardini as an individual student. But in a school where 65% of students were born overseas and roughly 40% are refugees or seeking asylum, Mark Taylor, head of learning for the company, realised more could be done. They invited guest composer Helen Franzmann, baritone Jason Barry-Smith, mezzo soprano Jessica Low and musical director Trevor Jones to help students develop their own song.

Eighteen students signed up for the six-week project, in which they were asked: what makes you feel like you belong? In a performance on Thursday night, attended by friends and family, they bopped on stage: some students played the guitar or flute; some sang in the chorus; some did solos. At various points they walked up to the microphone to tell their own stories.

“I belong to Australia because I can do most of the things that I cannot do in Iran – I can sing,” says Hardini, who has dreams of performing in front of Simon Cowell in America’s Got Talent. “In Iran, people cannot be free. You have to do all things secretly.”

In 2016, a national opera review found that Opera Queensland had been operating at a loss, leading to questions whether it should retain its status and funding as a major performing arts company. But while that review referred mostly to the main-stage productions, it has for years conducted community outreach, in this case receiving a $12,000 boost from the Celebrating Multicultural Queensland grant.

Megan Washington, who collaborated with students and Opera Queensland on Composed in Queensland. Photograph: Ben Rushton/AAP

“Opera can glaze over young people,” says Taylor, but it is simply “narrative told through song. It’s about the power of the human voice. Community engagement shouldn’t be the lovely stuff on top. It should be the guts of what we’re doing: it tests the elasticity of opera.”

Songs of Belonging is one of two Opera Queensland projects held this month: in Composed in Queensland, the company worked with students from 11 regional schools to create a song about growing up in the drought-stricken central west.

“It was lovely to see them discover that music can have a function beyond something that’s on the radio,” says indie star Megan Washington who, alongside country music singer Sara Storer, travelled to Longreach last week to teach the kids.

In the remote communities, the unrelenting dry spell was the children’s biggest concern. Yet, just before Washington arrived, it rained. “And the kids went mental!” she says. “They all said, ‘We want rain’. There were some kids there who had never seen rain – it was pretty incredible.”

In Yeronga state high school, located in Brisbane’s inner city, students have a different challenge: namely poverty, fitting in and often traumatic pasts.

For Songs of Belonging they were asked to tell their stories – giving as little or as much as they wanted to share. One girl, from New Caledonia, felt she couldn’t talk but her narrative became the chorus: “Sometimes I can’t speak it / Just know that I feel it.”

“Music is the universal language,” says Yaronga’s music teacher Kiera Deakin. “We can speak different languages but still be together through music: everyone is open to sharing their music and their background. There is no judgment.”

For Ciro Kurilic – a tall boy with an open, friendly face who wants to become a nurse – that means beatboxing.

“Keeping me human is beatboxing. I got offered an opportunity to do a video, got offered a bit of money, it put me back on where I want to go,” he says. “There’s the gym to let out stress, boxing to let out anger, but music really just lets it all out.”

His family, who still have no home after fleeing a domestic incident, currently lives in a refuge in Brisbane. “We’re actually happy,” says the 16-year-old with a big grin. “Why? Because I’m alive.”

Ugandan student Steven George, meanwhile, admits he’s not the best singer. But in the chorus for Songs of Belonging, his moves are infectious (including a surprise splits). His wishes his mother could have attended the performance but she can’t drive and it is hard for her to travel to the school.

Students of Brisbane’s Yeronga state high school take part in Opera Queensland’s program Songs of Belonging Photograph: Stephanie Do Rozario

His father was murdered in Uganda (poisoned by jealous neighbours, he says) but, with the rest of the family now in Australia, he feels he can do anything. “Since my dad died, I threw [away] all my fears, I fight for myself,” says the 17-year-old.

On Thursday night, as the song is finally performed, George gets up, walks over to the mike, throws back his shoulders, and declares proudly to the audience: “I belong. They took away the person I love more than anyone in this world: my dad.

“Every morning I look in the mirror and I see him. And I wish he could see how strong I am now.”